Today's Mudline

December 9, 2016

Donald Trump tweet on SNL: "Unwatchable! Totally biased, not funny...sad."....Response tweet from Danielle Muscato: "Jesus f***ing Christ. You are the president-elect. Pick your f***ing battles, man. You're embarrassing yourself."....Sarah Palin on Trump's Carrier deal: "Crony capitalism."....Kellyanne Conway on Dems: "A bunch of crybabies and sore losers."....Sean Hannity on Dems: "Their sub-par, crooked, corrupt candidate lost."....Seth McFarlane on Trump: "[Hollywood people] learned to recognize the blustery showmanship of a lying con man because we encounter it every day in our business."....Trump's lawyers on Michigan recount: "Lawless, insulting...Farce."....CA Secretary of State Alex Padilla on Trump fraud claims: "Absurd. His reckless tweets are inappropriate and unbecoming of a president-elect."....Bernie Sanders on Trump's voter fraud claims: "Disgraceful and unfounded nonsense."....Mark Hamill on Trump staff and cabinet appointees and candidates: "A who's-who of really despicable people."....Asawin Suebsaeng on Trump: "Behaves as if he were a nightmarish caricature dreamed up by some bored ACLU staffers."....Trump on Sen. Elizabeth Warren: "Just a terrible person. Everybody in the Senate hates her."....Rep. Chris Collins on Mitt Romney: "A self-serving egomaniac."....Newt Gingrich: "You have never, ever in your career seen a serious adult who's wealthy, independent, has been a presidential nominee, suck up at the rate that Mitt Romney is sucking up."....Jon Stewart on Trump: "[Said Hillary Clinton] was an unqualified Secretary of State because of the way she handled classified material. His selection for Secretary of State will be David Petraeus, who pled guilty to mishandling classified material. He said she was unqualified because she gave a speech to Goldman Sachs. His Secretary of the Treasury is somebody from Goldman Sachs. We're in post-accountability."....

Daily Briefing

Deep buzz for the content-deprived

Every weekday, while you get showered and dressed, we pluck these dewy-
fresh, breaking stories from the info-clogged byways of the datasphere.
Pour yourself a cup of coffee and stoke up on everything you need to know,
or at least enough to fake it.

For Apple fans worldwide, Steve Jobs was a superhero. Now, he’s been given a tribute usually accorded to superheroes: An action figure has been made in his likeness. The doll, which was created by Chinese company In Icons, will be released in February, but can be pre-ordered now. Of course, you’ll have to wait a bit until the Web site comes back up. It seems rabid Jobs fans have overwhelmed the company with visits...

After months of predictions of a boring race and polls showing Mitt Romney leading, the final race was confusing — and uncalled — down to the wire. The muddled result has a series of effects going forward. Below are POLITICO's seven takeaways from the Iowa caucuses...

Iran’s military sharpened its tone toward the United States on Tuesday with a blunt warning that an American aircraft carrier that left the Persian Gulf through the strategic Strait of Hormuz last week should not return. The warning, by Iran’s military chief, was the latest and most aggressive volley in a nearly daily exchange of barbed statements between Iran and the United States...

President Hu Jintao of China has said that the West is trying to dominate China by spreading its culture and ideology and that China must strengthen its cultural production to defend against the assault, according to an essay in a Communist Party policy magazine published this week...

This week we've been sharing our favorite articles of the year on slate. This is the final installment, our overall top 10 stories of the year. For our full list -- including the top 10 articles about sports, pollitics, tech, and more -- check out Longform's Best of 2011.

It was just after dawn in Coralville, Iowa, the week before Christmas, and I asked the young waitress at the hotel restaurant if she would kindly direct Newt Gingrich to my table when he arrived. She looked uncertain.

Imagine a vast field on which a terrible battle has recently been fought, the bare ground cratered by fusillade after fusillade of heavy artillery, trees reduced to blackened stumps, wisps of toxic gas hanging in the gray, and corpses everywhere.

A terrible scene, made worse by the sound of distant laughter, because somehow, on the heights commanding the dead zone, the officers’ club has made it through intact. From its balconies flutter bunting, and across the blasted landscape there comes a chorus of hearty male voices in counterpoint to the wheedling of cadres of wheel-greasers, the click of betting chips, the orotund declamations of a visiting congressional delegation: in sum, the celebratory hullabaloo of a class of people that has sent entire nations off to perish but whose only concern right now is whether the ’11 is ready to drink and who’ll see to tipping the servants...